LU Text

LU Text is published by the Press Office on Fridays during term time and aims to keep you regularly informed of the University's news and developments. Editor, Vicky Tyrrell. To view previous editions see LU Text Archive.

NEWS

Higher degree Ceremony

The Higher Degree ceremonies will take place on Wednesday 9 December 2009. The full timetable is available on the website.
The Chancellor Sir Christian Bonington CBE will confer two Honorary Degrees on:

Professor W. Brian Arthur , a distinguished economist (and alumnus) who led the development of the modern understanding of increasing returns
Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell DBE FRS, current President of the Institute of Physics who discovered the first radio pulsars.

For more information, please contact the Ceremonies and Events Office on 01524 592190.

Lancaster to have first BREEAM Outstanding building

Lancaster University has awarded the construction contract for the new £10m building which will provide performance space for the Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts (LICA). The Building will be built to the BREEAM ‘outstanding’ standards, and will be the first Higher Education building in the UK to reach such strict environmental targets for construction .
Work is due to begin on site on Monday 19th October 2009 and the facility will be open for the academic year in September 2010.
›To view the full story

2009 Richardson Institute Annual Peace Lecture

Award winning Australian foreign correspondent Sophie McNeill has been invited to deliver the Lancaster University 2009 Richardson Institute Annual Peace Lecture.
The Richardson Institute is a peace and conflict research centre and part of the Department of Politics and International Relations .
The free public lecture called ‘Reporting from conflict zones: telling the stories of the victims’ will be held at Lancaster University (Management School lecture theatre 08) , Thursday 15 October,6.00-8.00pm.
›To view the full story

Global Corporate Challenge 2009

Lancaster University has won a trophy after taking part in an initiative aimed at promoting fitness among employees. The Global Corporate Challenge 2009 was a 125 day health and fitness programme. Each team member wore a pedometer and logged their step count on the GCC website. The aim was to walk 10,000 steps each day. Bike miles could also be logged and converted into steps and each team plotted their virtual progress around the world.
Nine teams from the University took part covering a total of almost 35,000 miles and resulting in a carbon abatement of 2,090kg through walking and cycling.
The best team was the D floor team from University House including the Vice Chancellor, Amanda Chetwynd, Trevor McMillan, Annette Wellings, Cary Cooper, Andrew Neal and Gavin Brown. Together they achieved a daily team average of 15,446 steps while Gavin Brown was also the University’s most active participant averaging 23,365 steps a day.
The best student team were the seven medical students from Happy Feet.
http://www.gettheworldmoving.com/

Chaplaincy Centre 40th anniversary seminar series

To celebrate The Chaplaincy Centre’s 40th anniversary, a special seminar series has been organised called Faith in the University: Past, Present and Future. These will take place on Thursdays at 1pm in the Anglican and Free Church Chapel in the Chaplaincy Centre.
The Chaplaincy Centre, which was dedicated in 1969, was innovative not only in its design but also in the multi-faith nature of the space. Initially, three crosses adorned the spires, but students protested that the presence of the three crosses would stop students of other faiths from worshipping there. The arms were sawn off the highest cross, leaving a spike which is still here today. The distinctive spires served as the inspiration for the logo adopted by the University in 1989, its silver jubilee year.

Support For Eco-Innovation goes live

Funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) (£1.5m) and the Northwest European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) (£1.7m), the Northwest Eco-innovation Programme will help hundreds of businesses exploit fresh market opportunities for more environmentally sound products and services.
The launch of the North West Eco-innovation Programme will take place on October 22nd at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, where BBC 2 Dragons’ Den investor Richard Farleigh will speak about innovation as the key to business success.
The three-year support programme was designed by Lancaster University and will be delivered in partnership with C-Tech Innovation Ltd. It is the first of its kind in the UK and is delivered under the ‘Improving your Resource Efficiency’ product, part of the Government’s Solutions for Business portfolio.
It will provide one-to-one assistance to 480 Small and Medium Sized Enterprises resulting in 240 new environmental products and saving 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. In addition the programme aims to create 107 jobs and safeguard 373.›To view the full story

More investment needed for cancer research

Lancaster University is backing the North West Cancer Research Fund’s call for more investment in research to find treatments for the disease.
The charity has raised over £28million over the last 60 years and is currently funding three research centres at Lancaster, Liverpool and Bangor Universities.
The North West Cancer Research Fund is backing Gordon Brown’s plans for improved cancer testing, but insists research into treatments should not be ignored.
Dr Edward Parkin from Lancaster University specialises in prostate cancer research and insists that the reliability of early detection tests also needs to be considered. ›To view the full story

IAS research programme

The Institute for Advanced Studies research programme for 2009-10 commences on 15-16 October with a two-day interdisciplinary launch event on campus. The programme, directed by Dr Bronislaw Szerszynski of Sociology, will involve academics from all four faculties and many external collaborators in a year-long exploration of ideas and practices of experimentation in science and technology, the arts, commerce, politics and the wider culture. The programme will include an extensive arts programme in the North West delivered in collaboration with FutureEverything, the Nuffield Theatre, the Lancaster International Concert Series, the Peter Scott Gallery, the Storey Gallery, Lancaster Literature Festival, and CUBE (Manchester). For more information on the launch event and programme, see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/experimentality, or email Anne-Marie Mumford at the IAS (a.mumford@lancaster.ac.uk).

Lancaster in the news

Lancaster in the news - The Press Office monitors all media coverage and this is a selection of stories from the past week including the University's award winning Eco Residences in the Times Higher Education and Professor David Denver on BBC Radio 4.

People

Goodbye and good luck to John McGovern (Central Services), who leaves today. John was originally involved with the building of the University in the 1960's as a 'navvy' before becoming a student. He then had a career with the British Council living and working in Japan and Jordan.
John was director of the University's Institute for English Language Education before being appointed Director of Communications and Marketing in 1999, which incorporated the role of Director of the International Office. He was also acting University Secretary for a year.
John has been extremely influential in developing the University's international strategy and key partnerships, such as Sunway University College, and Goenka. He will be remembered with affection by his colleagues.

Personal Chairs have been awarded to Paolo Palladino (History) and Henning Schomerus (Physics)

The work of LICA artist Jane Rushton will be exhibited in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Due to open on October 8th, the works are the result of information gathered during a month long period of research living on and travelling through the Greenland tundra, funded by Arts Council England and Lancaster University.
Her abstract paintings aim to encourage a quiet and thoughtful engagement with the Arctic, by offering insight into its complexity and beauty.
The exhibition will be held in Greenland’s National Culture Centre.

Lancaster’s Royal Literary Fellow ,novelist John Murray is available to help students in any department of the university who would like to improve their academic writing skills this year. Based in the English and Creative Writing department and sponsored by the Royal Literary Fund, John has worked with students from a wide range of subjects, everything from English to Criminology to Computing Science, History and Law.
John invites academic staff to direct any students who have academic writing problems his way. He works with students on grammar and punctuation, to the more abstract skills of developing an argument and structuring an essay or a thesis.
The RLF scheme was first established in 1999 and John became Lancaster University’s inaugural RLF Fellow in 2007.
If you know of any student who would benefit from such a confidential one to one tutorial, then please suggest that they email John and book an appointment. He is in Lancaster for two days a week during term time, Mondays and Tuesdays only.
Email John Murray to book an appointment (on campus Mondays and Tuesdays) j.r.murray@lancaster.ac.uk

Sian Phillips, a 2009 LICA Fine Art graduate, has appeared on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, from 11pm-midnight on Thursday October 1st.
She used the opportunity to create a tree sculpture and invited comments from passersby. Watch footage of the event
here.

Notices

Parking Update

University House drop-off bay in Bowland Avenue – Please be aware that this area is for the loading or unloading of goods or people only and there is a maximum stay of 15 minutes. New signage is in place and this regulation will be enforced by Security.

Closure of car parking for the new LICA Building

From Thursday 15th October the following car parking areas will be completely closed off to enable the construction of the new LICA Building at the northern end of campus:

North Drive Visitor Car Park (permanent loss of 11 spaces)

Staff Preference temporary car park on precise site for the new LICA building (permanent closure)

Staff Preference spaces and 3 x disabled spaces at the end of the Great Hall access road (permanent closure, although disabled bays will be reinstated beside new access road to be constructed from North-West Drive as part of the LICA project).

New contractor’s car park on old hockey pitch

In an effort to reduce contractor parking on main campus and to free up more spaces for other users, Galliford Try (main contractor for the Waterside and new Sports Centre) will be able to park on the new car park next to the tennis courts, accessed from Green Lane. The access will be gated and initially controlled by Galliford Try. This new facility will be available for Galliford Try and their sub-contractors only until a more secure access control system is installed at the entrance from Green Lane. The facility will then become available for other contractors working on campus to use for parking.

Cycle shelters

Starting on October 12th there will be remedial works to the cycle shelters situated at the Management School, the Great Hall and on Physics Avenue. The work will take one week and will reduce the height of the shelters in order to offer more protection from the elements.
Bikes will need to be removed from the shelters prior to the 12th and these shelters will not be back in use until w/c 19th October.

Power shutdowns

As part of the utility metering programme the power will be isolated temporarily to the following buildings this weekend at the following times.

Engineering Building – Saturday 3rd October 08:30 until 10:30 – Please note they will not require access to the building as the meter is in the plant room which is accessible externally.

Furness College – Saturday 3rd October 10:45 until 12:45
This shutdown will also affect the roof flats in Furness College but none of the Furness Residences. The Venue will also be affected.

Fylde College – Sunday 4th October 09:30 until 11:30
This shutdown will also affect the roof flats in Fylde College but none of the Fylde Residences

Sports Centre - Sunday 4th October 07:15 until 09:15
For more information on the energy metering project and to keep up to date on the work taking place around the campus please
visit

Please help with a research project
(Lancaster University Management School, STFC Daresbury and Hull Business School), to examine and develop web based technology that would improve the UK's research abilities, by completing a questionnaire. We seek information from people in the public sector who work with enterprise or research business matters as part of their job.
We are interested in the nature of technologies currently used to communicate with work colleagues. Please help with this externally funded project - click here to begin the survey, alternatively type http://www.ictresearch.org/crib/crib.htm into your browser.
The project includes Mary Rose (Lancaster), Rob Crouchley (Lancaster), Alastair Robertson (Lancaster), Barbara Allan (Hull), Chris Awre (Hull), Rob Allan (STFC Daresbury), John Bancroft (STFC Daresbury) and Robert Sherratt (Hull).

Native research assistants wanted

A British Council project which starts on the 19th of October is looking for native research assistants from various countries listed below.
The positions involve call making and emailing in your native language as well as analysing responses. Training on research skills will be provided.The work can be done from the Lancaster University office in the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC). The post is part-time and hours will depend on the language, but can easily be arranged to suit around study or other work commitments. Salary depends on language quotas and will be at least £8 per hour.
To apply,please send your most recent CV/Resume and cover letter to Kiira Haanpera: bc@intersperience.com.
Successful applicants will be notified within 6 weeks.

Urgently needed in Department of European Languages and Cultures: French native speaker Post-Grad to teach three hours of oral skills per week to first year advanced students (Thursday 2.00 (or 4.00); Thursday 3.00; Friday 3.00). Please contact Angela Bolton at a.c.bolton@lancaster.ac.uk

WHAT'S ON

For a full list of all items submitted for What's On, please see the Arts and Seminars & Lectures LU News web pages.

Tuesday October 13
Celebrated novelist Iain Sinclair reading and discussing his work
Faraday Lecture Theatre at 6pm, to be followed by wine reception
Monday October 26
Professor Terry Eagleton will be reading from The Gatekeeper: A Memoir.
Faraday Lecture Theatre at 6pm to be followed by wine reception
Wednesday October 28
Professor Terry Eagleton - Open Faculty Cultural Theory PG seminar (for all MAs and PhDs in the Faculty)
venue: tbc, 2-4 pm
- topic: Problems of Interpretation
- text/ background reading: Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach' and Rubenstein, Marx and Wittgenstein.

Following the Mental Health in Higher Education (mhhe) project's recent networking day on teaching, researching and supporting mental health at Lancaster University, staff will be hosting a tea and cake event for World Mental Health Day on Friday 9 October 2009, 10.00 – 12.00 in Furness Senior Common Room - Everyone welcome all proceeds to the Mental Health Foundation. For more information contact Nicky on 01524 594091 Link to the seminar webpage.

ADVERTS

Contact Victoria Tyrrell on (01524) 594120 with items for LU text, LU News or for external publicity.
Events information should be sent to Laura Mitchell Press Office Assistant (01524) 592103.

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The editor reserves the right to edit copy. The opinions expressed in this bulletin are not necessarily those of the university management.